Sexting Weiner finally told to go
Hillary Clinton’s closest aide separated from her husband yesterday after he was caught, for the third time in five years, sending sexually suggestive photographs of himself to other women.
Huma Abedin, 40, vicechairwoman of the Clinton campaign, said she would be separating from Anthony Weiner after ‘‘long and painful consideration and work on my marriage’’.
Weiner, 51, once a rising star in the Democrats, was forced to resign from the House of Representatives in 2011 after he sent explicit pictures of himself to women he appeared barely to know.
He promised to reform his ways, but it emerged yesterday that over the past 20 months he had sent numerous suggestive messages via Twitter to a divorced Donald Trump supporter whom he had met online. One message included a photograph of his crotch and naked torso, with his and Abedin’s infant son in the background.
‘‘You do realise you can see you[r] Weiner in that pic??’’ the woman wrote back. In another Twitter message, also accompanied by a picture of his crotch, he wrote: ‘‘My mood. . .’’ The woman responded: ‘‘O goodness’’.
After her husband’s first sex scandal, in 2011, Abedin said the episode had provoked ‘‘every emotion that one would imagine: rage and anger and shock’’.
She stood by him while he had psychotherapy and he then declared himself a changed man.
In 2013, however, it emerged he had sent more pictures of himself, this time to a 22-year-old woman called Sydney Leathers. To the delight of the tabloids, he had used a kind of nom de guerre: Carlos Danger.
The parallels between his wayward behaviour and Bill Clinton’s philandering in the 1990s had already led the two men’s wives to be likened to a kind of political Thelma and Louise.
Weiner and Abedin married in 2010, in a ceremony performed by Bill Clinton. Asked about the most recent photographs, Weiner admitted knowing the woman but said their conversations were ‘‘always appropriate’’.
Abedin first worked for Hillary Clinton as a 19-year-old White House intern. They have grown so close she has been referred to as the former secretary of state’s surrogate daughter.
Emails made public last week showed that while she worked for Hillary Clinton at the state department, she fielded requests forwarded by the Clinton Foundation. The links between the charity and the department have led to allegations that Clinton succumbed to conflicts of interest.
Trump, the Republican nominee, said: ‘‘Huma is making a very wise decision. I know Anthony Weiner well, and she will be far better off without him.’’